Starting Over
by RomildaVanexD
Summary: With his marriage falling apart, Carlisle Cullen finds comfort in a strange patient - one with a dark secret ... Twilight/HP crossover, CC/QQ slash


"I was almost burned to death ... I faked it, though .... I had to get away from ... him."

Quinerius Quirrel was offering a bizarre description of what exactly was wrong with him. Dr. Carlisle Cullen frowned, and tried to make sense of the information given.

"How were you burned? I mean, how exactly does one fake his death and then come back to life?" he inquired. His voice was calm, but he was utterly confused.

"I was burnt by love," Quirrel said scathingly. Carlisle posed no quesions to this answer, but rather jotted something down in Quirrel's charts: _MIGHT BE MENTALY UNSTABLE._

"So ... er ... how did you fake your death, again?" Carlisle asked anxiously.

"Well, the boy, he touched me, and I just started to crumble, I suppose. Well, he got off of my head, so he didn't die. The boy collapsed, he went flying out, I guess. He was only a head - a spirit, or something, I dunno. So, I mustered up my strength, and used my wand to get enough strength to get out. I burnt the wall and spread the ashes, it looked like I was completely dead."

Carlisle stood at the foot of his bed, his mouth hanging open. "Are you sure this wasn't just a hallucination?" he asked. "You were found completely unconscious .... "

"Of course not," Quirrel snapped. Carlisle was taken aback, and stepped somewhat away from the bed. The more time he spent with this man, the more he began to fear for his life. He then chuckled, he had no life, henceforth, nothing to fear for.

"You're a vampire," Quirrel pointed out. Carlisle froze. "Haven't you heard of wizards?" Quirrel asked.

"Well, I - I thought that the talk of wizards in London was just a rumor," Carlisle admitted. "Centuries ago, there were wizards, but I thought that they had died down."

"No, just went into hiding," Quirrel said, clearly smug that he was smarter than the doctor on one particular subject.

"Well," said Carlisle, straightening his tie. "That explains a lot. What was the most recent thing you remember, then?"

"I went into London somewhere ... and that's it," Quirrel said. Carlisle nodded, scribbling more down on his charts.

"Well, you were severely burned when brought it," Carlisle said. "You'll have to stay a while ... "

Quirrel scowled. "I'm a wizard. I'm_ fine _now." Carlisle chuckled, but shook his head.

"You have to stay," he said. "Wizard or not, you don't just get over things so quickly." There was also a part of Carlisle that frightened him to let him free to the public - he seemed ... not right, in some way.

Quirrel gave a dramatic sigh and rolled his eyes. "I have to go," he explained. "Or everyone will find out I'm alive - and no one can find out, especially not .... him."

"If you could tell me who him is ... " Carlisle said, trailing off towards the end. Quirrel shook his head.

"He probably already knows," he said, almost to himself. "Magic like I've never seen ... incredible. And yet, he wasn't alive .... though he was ... "

Carlisle nodded, backing away from his bed. "Er ... well, a nurse will check in with you soon ... good night," he said as he walked out of the door. As he left, he crossed off _MIGHT BE MENTALLY UNSTABLE, _and scrawled down _DEFINITELY MENTALLY UNSTABLE._

_-------------------------------------------------------------------------------_

Carlisle Cullen was a vampire/doctor/"foster parent" ... and so on. He had moved to London, England not so long ago ... probably a bad idea for several reasons. One, it was too popular a place, which would make it increasingly difficult to just leave in a few years without notice. Two, depspite the fact that it rained an awful lot - a selling point when the family was trying to determine where to move - it wasn't very shaded. It felt like there was almost a constant threat of revealing themselves. Three, it was fairly close to Volterra, and the Volturi. They always thought of the Cullens as sone threat, even though they were probably the least-threatening vampire coven in the world that Carlisle knew of. And fourth, (and worse of all) it had put a large strain on his relationship with his wife, Esme. She was the least negative person he had ever met, and yet she hated London. He didn't know why, but she loathed it.

For the last reason, he was spending a lot of time at the hospital. The patients supplied much more bizarre injuries (or reasons to them) than he had heard in some of the other places he had lived, however, the Quirrel man provided easily the strangest. Something about him both frightened him and intriqued him. He seemed to be hiding so much, and Carlisle was determined to discover what.

"Can I go yet?" he asked lazily. He had been in the hopsital for just two days, and his nasty attitude was turning all of the staff impatient and surly - however, Carlisle wouldn't free him.

"No, your arm is still almost completely blackened," Carlisle said. Quirrel sighed heavily,

"If I can go and find my wand, I could easily fix that," he muttered, scowling.

"You don't know where your wand is, so that would be difficult," Carlisle pointed out. Quirrel gave an exasperated sigh. He was too smart, too good for these people.

"Good night," he said, exiting. He couldn't stand this man - and Carlisle was very patient - and yet, he felt a desire to be around him ...

"Carlisle," Alice whispered urgently that night, as he walked through the door. "We have to talk."

"What? Did you see something, what's going on?" he asked, as they moved into a corner.

"I saw ... you and Esme splitting up," she admitted, her yellow eyes looking like they were holding back tears - though, of course, vampires can't cry ...

"Are you sure?" Carlisle asked anxiously. Alice shook her head. "Well - what did you see, then?"

"I don't know ... like a flash of divorce papers," Alice said. Carlisle buried his face in his palm. They had been together for nearly a century, what could go that wrong?

"Who else knows?" he asked quietly. He only wanted to know if Esme did. If she did know, it would be the certain push to drive her to seeking a divorce; he could still try to change the future.

"Just Edward," Alice said. "I mean, he saw in it my mind. I don't think he told Esme. But he's been expecting it for weeks ..."

"What does Esme think about me?" Carlisle asked suddenly. If Edward knew, then he would tell Alice. He sounded like an elementary school student with a crush on one of the girls in his class.

"I-I don't know," Alice said. "She hates it here, though. She wants to leave."

"Why?" Carlisle asked desperately. Alice bit her lip, as though she had hoped to skim over this question.

"This is were she was when she had the miscarriage," Alice admitted. Carlisle banged his head against the wall. Of course. How could he have been so stupid?

"Why didn't she say anything when we decided to move here?" he asked, almost to himself.

"She didn't want to hurt your marriage," Alice said sadly. Carlisle gave a dark, sarcastic chuckle.

Alice bade him goodbye, as she and Jasper were going to go hunting in Scotland, - a five minute jog for vampires - and he was left to wallow in his thoughts. Divorce? he thought miserably; the word seemed to weigh a thousand pounds in his mind. He didn't understand how after three hundred years of life things could go so wrong in just a few months.


End file.
